How can I delete System Volume Information on non important drives...please help!!

Windows XP Support

How can I delete System Volume Information on non important drives...please help!!

I am having around seven hard drives. I am here only using one the IDE. This is the only drive that has my OS and the other one are on SCSI. Now here I had simply turned off system restore on the drives which I am using for storage. But somehow I can see System Volume Information folders. And I had found that it has accumulated more than 8GB of space on every drive. So that is really worse. I need some help to get rid of them.

I think you will need some good partition manager tool here which can help you fixing the problem that you are facing. System volume information here just stores the restore point of pc. And it is not really having something great. How it can occupy 8GB of the space. It is essential that you must simply check properly to find out that any other app or files are not using the same. Try to find out some kind of relative software which can fix the issue you are facing.

Your link helped me as well Kaylene. FYI for everyone, in case you don't remember, the system restore also stores unwanted programs. McAfee located a PuP (potentially unwanted program) called PuP.j in the system restore folder. I'm sure it's the one that has been eating up my bandwidth and causing my system to act quirky.

I've decided, and making a suggestion to you readers, to disable permanently the Windows System Restore functionality and instead rely on software which makes a system image backup. This type of data backup and restore is used by large networks in industries where data integrity and storage are crucial. It may take longer than a Windows System restore and you have to be responsible for remembering when to do it, but this way you can keep in consecutive order each system image backup, by date, and select the one you want for backup. If you are concerned about how long it takes to make a system image for restore, start it before you go to bed.

What I know about System Restore is that it is never designed to be used like an some kind of backup alternative. It is very necessary that your system must have a good backup strategy. It is very important for protecting the data in your system. Here System Restore as the name suggest is a nice tool which replace system type files and the registry when there is some problem or when they are damaged or corrupted. And it wll not touch the user data.

Re: How can I delete System Volume Information on non important drives...please help!!

Sorry to Bump thsi old thread. I've been dealing with a similar problem. however. After i turned of Sys restore and deleted the folder, it re-created itself and i didnt have the permission to open/view/delete. So i rebooted in safe mode, and added users\administrators as a permission and deleted it again. upon reboot it re-creates itself.

I'm currently runnign XP on the 3rd Install after format day2 Vs virus
running Nod32 and AVG which are not detecting anything other then a periodic small virus that they are deleting. the original virus that i noticed was called virut, which was cloging my sockets so i couldn't update anti virus or get online.

I assume you have turned off the System Restore service on your XP computer.
You can then download a program called WinDirStat from Download.com.
After you install this program, fire it up.
The program will list out all your hard drives folders as well as in graphical form.
You can then access the System Volume Information folder.
Just highlight the "_restore{ .....}" folder and then go to the menu to choose "delete". Then the folder will be deleted.
Just a remark, you can even select to delete to recycle bin or permanently.
(Of course, logically no one will leave the files in the recycle bin because our objective is to get rid of all such files and reclaim the space on the hard drives.)
You have no need to restart your computer after deleting the restore point data files.

I came across this problem and found nothing really useful, but finally I found easy solution. So here's my share

where X: is drive, where you want to get rid of that folder, which is really not needed whatsoever, if you have windows recovery turned off. This works on Windows XP home too.

If you have localized windows, you will have to replace "y" for equivallent letter for "yes" in your langauge.

Other cool trick, how to gain some extra space, is to use 64kB clusters, if you intend to store only large files (movies on flash drive for example) and set ntfs log (which has normally around 60 megabytes) to minumum:

Code:

format X: /fs:NTFS /a:64k /q
chkdsk X: /l:2048

Note, that if you want to change cluster size, you will have to format the volume, which will destroy everything on drive X:, chkdsk /l you can use safely on volume with data.

when someone ask a favor and question your knowledge whether you know how to do it... someone else is asking why you want to do it? There is no WHY for others, it is only WHY in yourself. you help nobody..

How you want to clean your desk may not as clean as others want their desk to be clean! I think you should find the answer and show what you can before you ask WHY.

There are some very nice batch and it works. I do not bother on the root but I hate MS touching all external devices. MS options and solutions never worked on my Pro SP1-3, hence making me very suspicious SVI being a necessity for a third gain.

you will able to see all the folders like restore or some sort of numbers, open it
then delete all folders one by one, you just cant delete all folders at same time due to the singal activity of RUN Command.

There will be last directory that cant be deleted because of running state. but you have to take no worry about it !

Free your Drive..
There is no need to remove them from internal drives, but
it is a must for removable drives. There is no other way
to keep Windows from stuffing them up with undisclosed
content if you connect them to different computers.

Here you go:

a) $Recycle.Bin:
- set "don't move files to recycle bin" for that drive;
- rename $Recycle.Bin to something else;
- create empty file with a name $Recycle.Bin;
- delete renamed directory for good

b) System Volume Information:
- disable system restore for that drive;
- disable indexing for that drive;
- make sure there is no data encryption;
- assume ownership and allow all access;
- if it is not freshly formatted drive, SVI is used by some
svchost process. I killed it by Unlocker under XP, but
there are other ways (safe mode, repair prompt);
- delete that directory for good;
- create empty file with a name "System Volume Information"

Two empty files are necessary to prevent Windows recreating
directories. Make them "system" and "hidden" to keep out of sight.

To the people who say "do not touch" instead of helping:
- Yes, you can prevent Windows to fill up that directories only
on your internal drives. What about removable drives?
- For removable drives, there is absolutely NOTHING OF VALUE
in that directories.

Re: How can I delete System Volume Information on non important drives...please help!!

After struggling with all the previous responses and the justifiable bickering, I was ready to give up - that is until I read your email. Prior to this, no matter what I did, these directories kept magically reappearing on me. Your steps, though somewhat vague in areas, pegged the mark right on, literally hit the nail on the head - so far. Great solution. Really though, someone should not have to go thru these steps to obtain their desired outcome.

Now, I'm running Norton Ghost to back up my current internal harddrive to my external harddrive, and also want to create a restore point on my external harddrive as well (I'm increasing my current internal harddrive to a bigger size, and don't want to lose its current configuration and installations). Hopefully, my new hidden files on my external drive, does not screw things up for me.